ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  HIS  EMANCIPATION 
POLICY 


AN     ADDRESS     DELIVERS!}      BEFORE 

THE    CHICAGO    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY 


FEBRUARY    27,    19O6 


PAUL    iSELBY 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE  SOCIETY 

IN    COMMEMORATION  OF  THE 

ONE  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY 

OF  THE  BIRTH  OF 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
FEBRUARY  12,  1909 


Ball's  Emancipation  Group, 
Washington,  D.   C. 


ABRAHAM    LINCOLN 


THE  EVOLUTION  OF  HIS  EMANCIPATION 
POLICY 


AW     ADDRESS     DELIVERS!)      BEFORE 

THE    CHICAGO    HISTORICAL    SOCIETY 


FEBRUARY    27,     19O6 


BY 
SELBY 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE   SOCIETY 

IN    COMMEMORATION  OF  THE 

ONE  HUNDREDTH  ANNIVERSARY 

OF  THE  BIRTH  OF 
ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 
FEBRUARY  12,  1909 


ABRAHAM  LINCOLN 

THE  EVOLUTION  OF  HIS  EMANCIPATION  POLICY. 


Mr.  President,  Ladies  and  Gentlemen  of  the  Chicago 

Historical  Society : 

6^         Next  to  the  service   rendered  in  maintaining  the   in- 
^    tegrity  of  the  Union  founded  by  Washington  and  his  com- 
^    patriots,    nothing    stands    forth    more    prominent    in    the 
1     career  of  Abraham  Lincoln  than  the  foresight  and  achieve- 
ment manifested  in  his  emancipation  policy.     While  up  to 
the  hour  of  his  assassination  this  brought  upon  him  the 
f  vilest  obloquy  and  denunciation  ever  visited  upon  an  Amer- 
•  «i    ican  statesman — surpassing  even  that  heaped  upon  Wash- 
w  ington — yet  one  of  the  most  striking  evidences  of  the  rev- 
5^  olution  in  sentiment  wrought  in  the  minds  of  his  enemies 
Q.  by  time  and  a  more  just  conception  of  what  he  sought  to 
accomplish,  is  furnished  in  the  fact  that,  to-day,  some  of 
*  his  most  bitter  assailants  of  forty  years  ago  have  ranged 
q_  themselves  on  the  side  of  his  most  ardent  admirers  and 
o  enthusiastic  eulogists.     It  is  to  this  phase  in   his   career 
and  what  it  illustrates — what  he   foresaw  with  such  un- 

3M 

^~  erring  sagacity,  and  what  he  accomplished  with  unswerving 

Q^  consistency  and  devotion  to  the  welfare  of  the  Nation — 

that  the  attention  of  the  reader  is  invited  in  this  address. 


It  was  during  one  of  the  darkest  of  the  many  dark 
periods  in  the  history  of  the  war  for  the  preservation  of  the 
Union,  when  Congress  and  the  President  were  casting  about 
for  a  policy  that  would  be  effective  in  suppressing  the  rebel- 
lion, that  two  distinguished  leaders  of  their  respective  par- 

283769 


ties,  holding  opposing  views  on  the  subject  of  slavery,  gave 
utterance,  in  their  respective  houses  of  Congress,  to  those 
strikingly  similar  predictions,  based  on  exactly  opposite  con- 
ditions. Said  one  of  them : 

"There  is  a  niche  in  the  temple  of  fame,  a  niche  near  to 
Washington,  which  should  be  occupied  by  the  statue  of  him  who 
shall  save  this  country.  Mr.  Lincoln  has  a  mighty  destiny.  It 
is  for  him,  if  he  will,  to  step  into  that  niche.  It  is  for  him  to 
be  but  a  President  of  the  people  of  the  United  States,  and  there 
will  his  statue  be.  But  if  he  choose  to  be,  in  these  times,  a 
mere  sectarian  and  a  party  man,  that  niche  will  be  reserved  for 
some  future  and  better  patriot.  It  is  in  his  power  to  occupy  a 
place  next  to  Washington,  the  Founder  and  Preserver,  side  by 
side."1 

The  other  prediction  ran  as  follows : 
"I,  too,  have  a  niche  for  Abraham  Lincoln ;  but  it  is  in  Free- 
dom's holy  fane,  and  not  in  the  blood-besmeared  temple  of  human 
bondage;  not  surrounded  by  slave-fetters  and  chains,  but  with 
the  symbols  of  freedom;  not  dark  with  bondage,  but  radiant 
with  the  light  of  Liberty.  In  that  niche  he  shall  stand  proudly, 
nobly,  gloriously,  with  shattered  fetters  and  broken  chains,  and 
slave-whips  beneath  his  feet.  If  Abraham  Lincoln  pursues  the 
path  evidently  pointed  out  for  him  in  the  Providence  of  God, 
as  I  believe  he  will,  then  he  will  occupy  the  proud  position  I 
have  indicated.  That  is  a  fame  Avorth  living  for ;  aye,  more : 
that  is  a  fame  worth  dying  for,  though  that  death  led  through 
the  blood  of  Gethsemane  and  the  agony  of  the  accursed  tree. 
.  .  .  Let  Abraham  Lincoln  make  himself  .  .  .  the  eman- 
cipator, the  liberator  .  .  .  and  his  name  shall  not  only  be 
enrolled  in  this  earthly  temple,  but  it  will  be  traced  on  the  liv- 
ing stones  of  that  temple  which  rears  itself  amid  the  thrones 
and  hierarchies  of  Heaven."2 

It  will  readily  be  inferred  what  were  the  conditions 
attached  to  these  parallel  predictions.  With  the  first  it 
was  that  Lincoln  should  use  his  authority  that  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery  might  be  protected  and  perpetuated  in  the 
States  where  it  already  existed ;  with  the  second,  that  slav- 
ery should  be  ultimately  exterminated.  Both  predictions 
have  been  fulfilled  by  subsequent  results :  The  first,  in 
spite  of  its  qualifications,  and  the  last  in  accordance  with 

Congressional  Globe,  37th  Congress  (Second  Session),  Speech 
of  Senator  John  J.  Crittenden,  of  Kentucky,  on  the  Confiscation 
Bill,  April  23,  1862. 

*The  same;  Speech  of  Hon.  Owen  Lovejoy,  of  Illinois,  in  the 
House  of  Representatives,  on  the  same  measure,  April  24,  1862. 

108 


them.  By  common  consent,  not  only  of  his  own  country- 
men but  of  the  civilized  world,  Abraham  Lincoln  has  been 
assigned  the  place  beside  Washington  here  predicted  for 
him.  Neither  prophet  lived  to  see  the  entire  fulfillment 
of  his  prediction,  but  while  the  heart  of  a  succeeding  gen- 
eration is  thrilled  by  the  fervid  eloquence  of  a  Lovejoy, 
it  seems  like  one  of  the  revenges  of  history  when  one  of 
the  purest,  most  patriotic  and  loyal  of  the  apologists  for 
slavery  was  permitted  to  predict  the  renown  of  the  man 
most  responsible  for  its  overthrow — a  result  over  which 
his  most  bitter  enemies  now  rejoice. 

Yet  the  attempt  has  been  renewed  at  intervals — though 
less  frequently  in  later,  years  than  formerly — to  detract 
from  Lincoln  a  part  of  the  honor  due  to  his  memory,  by 
claiming  that  he  was  not,  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  term, 
a  positive  factor  in  securing  the  abolition  of  slavery  on 
this  continent ;  but  that,  so  far  as  he  was  concerned,  the  re- 
sult was  an  accident,  the  outcome  and  consequence  of 
events  and  circumstances  which  he  lacked  the  power  to 
control.  At  times  it  has  been  some  Northern  representative 
of  a  class  who  opposed  the  war  policy  of  the  Government 
and  predicted  disaster  from  the  attempt  to  resist  secession 
by  force  of  arms ;  while,  again,  it  has  been  some  adherent  of 
the  "Lost  Cause,"  who  has  thus  essayed  to  apologize  for 
the  effort  to  perpetuate  the  existence  of  an  institution 
which  was  abhorrent  to  the  moral  sense  of  the  age  and 
condemned  by  universal  Christendom.  Both  seek  to  justify 
their  positions  by  assuming  that  the  great  leader  in  the 
cause  of  practical  emancipation  had  no  loftier  motive  than 
that  which  inspired  their  own  action;  but  they  only  suc- 
ceeded in  stultifying  themselves  in  face  of  the  fact  that 
their  chief  argument  against  both  Lincoln's  first  election 
and  his  subsequent  war  policy  was,  that  he  contemplated 
precisely  what  they  now  affect  to  deny  that  he  accomplished. 
They  were  wrong  in  the  one  case  as  they  were  in  the 
other. 


Invaluable  as  was  the  service  which  Lincoln  rendered 
to  his  country  and  the  cause  of  free  government  by  his  suc- 
cessful efforts  for  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  there  is 
no  part  of  his  public  and  official  life  that  will  have  3. 
stronger  fascination  for  the  student  of  history  in  the  future 
than  that  connected  with  the  framing  and  promulgation  of 
his  proclamation  of  emancipation.  In  fact,  this  is  already 
regarded  by  many  as  the  most  conspicuous  act  of  his  grand 
career — the  very  climax  and  culmination  of  a  life  given 
for  the  salvation  of  the  Republic.  It  is  this  fact  which 
makes  the  story  of  the  evolution  of  his  emancipation  policy 
of  such  absorbing  interest. 

There  were  two  leading  features  of  Lincoln's  character 
which  influenced  the  steps  in  his  war  policy  leading  up  to 
the  issue  of  his  Emancipation  Proclamation,  viz :  his  love 
of  freedom — which  meant  also  his  love  of  justice — and  his 
respect  for  the  Constitution  and  the  laws.  By  nature  and 
his  deep  sympathy  with  every  species  of  human  suffering 
a  "radical"  in  respect  to  the  former,  he  was,  at  the  same 
time,  inherently  and  strongly  conservative  as  to  the  latter. 
It  was  this  characteristic  which  enabled  him  to  effect  all 
that  the  most  zealous  champion  of  emancipation  hoped  for, 
while  adhering  most  closely  to  legal  and  constitutional 
methods  in  its  accomplishment.  This  was  evident  in  his 
whole  career  from  the  scene  in  New  Orleans,  when,  as  a 
young  flatboatman,  he  had  his  indignation  aroused  by  a 
revolting  exhibition  of  the  horrors  of  slavery,  down  to  the 
final  and  crowning  act  in  the  great  drama  in  which  he  was 
the  chief  actor,  the  signing  of  the  Emancipation  Proclama- 
tion and  the  approval  of  the  Constitutional  Amendment 
abolishing  slavery  in  all  the  States.  While  his  spoken  and 
written  words  during  this  period  do  not  show  that  he 
always  held  to  the  same  position  in  regard  to  methods,  they 
indicate  a  conscientious  and  consistent  adherence  to  the 
same  principles.  When  circumstances  required  a  change 
of  policy,  he  had  the  courage  to  make  it.  This  never  im- 

110 


plied  a  backward  step,  but  every  change  indicated  progress 
in  accordance  with  existing  conditions.  This  was  espe- 
cially evident  in  his  official  policy  after  he  was  entrusted 
with  the  direction  of  national  affairs ;  and  it  was  his  strong 
logical  sense  and  strict  adherence  to  legal  and  constitu- 
tional methods,  as  well  as  his  sagacity  in  keeping  "close  to 
the  people,"  that  made  the  entire  removal  of  slavery  possi- 
ble in  harmony  with  the  preservation  of  the  Union,  in  spite 
of  the  impatient  criticism  of  political  friends  and  the 
armed  hostility  of  open  and  avowed  enemies. 

Some  of  the  more  conspicuous  acts  in  Lincoln's  public 
career,  which  may  be  referred  to  as  constituting  eras  in 
the  development  of  his  policy  with  regard  to  the  institu- 
tion of  slavery,  include  the  following:  (i)  His  protest 
(in  conjunction  with  one  other  member  of  the  Illinois 
House  of  Representatives)  against  a  series  of  pro-slavery 
resolutions  which  had  passed  both  branches  of  the  General 
Assembly  at  the  session  of  1837,  in  which  he  declared  his 
belief  "that  the  institution  of  slavery  is  founded  in  both 
injustice  and  bad  policy,"  and  that  "the  Congress  of  the 
United  States  has  the  power,  under  the  Constitution,  to 
abolish  slavery  in  the  District  of  Columbia ;"  (2)  his  demon- 
stration before  the  Supreme  Court  of  Illinois,  in  1841,  of 
the  right  of  a  slave  girl  to  freedom  under  the  Ordinance  of 
1787 — thus  determining  the  application  of  that  second  char- 
ter of  American  freedom  to  Illinois  territory;  (3)  his 
introduction  in  the  Congressional  House  of  Representa- 
tives, in  January,  1847,  of  a  bill  for  the  abolition  of  slavery 
in  the  District  of  Columbia,  with  the  consent  of  the  voters  of 
the  District  and  with  compensation  to  the  owners,  together 
with  his  forty-two  votes  during  the  same  session  in  favor 
of  the  Wilmot  Proviso;  (4)  his  speeches,  beginning  with 
the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise  in  1854 — and  in 
opposition  to  that  measure — extending  to  1860,  including 
the  debates  with  Senator  Douglas  in  1858. 

During  this  period  of  over  twenty  years,  there  are  fre- 

111 


quent  utterances  of  opinion  on  the  subject  of  slavery  in 
his  private  correspondence — as  in  his  letter  to  his  friend, 
Joshua  F.  Speed,  in  1855 — but  always  in  harmony  with  the 
views  he  had  expressed  in  public  in  uncompromising  hos- 
tility to  the  "institution."  His  speeches  on  the  repeal  of 
the  Missouri  Compromise,  and  especially  the  debates  of 
1858,  furnish  a  most  complete  and  comprehensive  discus- 
sion of  the  slavery  issue  in  all  its  aspects,  as  that  question 
then  stood  between  the  advocates  and  the  opponents  of  ex- 
tension into  new  Territories,  and  made  him  the  natural 
leader  of  the  newly  organized  party  then  consolidating  its 
forces  for  the  successful  campaign  of  1860.  His  conserva- 
tive position  during  the  early  part  of  this  period  is  shown 
by  the  fact  that  he  did  not  participate  in  the  first  Anti-Ne- 
braska State  Convention,  held  at  Springfield,  October  4  and 
5,  1854,  and,  as  indicated  by  his  letter  to  Ichabod  Codding  of 
that  year,  declined  to  accept  a  place  in  the  Republican  State 
Central  Committee  to  which  he  had  been  chosen  by  that 
convention.  He  clung  to  the  hope,  at  that  time,  that  the 
Whig  party  would  be  revivified  by  ranging  itself  in  opposi- 
tion to  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise.  Yet  no 
one  questioned  the  consistency  of  his  opinions  and  attitude 
on  the  slavery  question,  and,  in  1856,  he  was  in  full  sym- 
pathy with  the  Republican  party,  which  came  into  full- 
fledged  existence  at  Bloomington  in  that  year.  In  taking 
this  position  he  only  followed  out  the  injunction  which  he 
had  given  to  his  friends — the  old  line  Whigs — at  Peoria, 
in  October,  1854,  when  he  advised  them  to  "stand  with 
anybody  that  stands  right.  Stand  with  him  while  he  is 
right,  and  part  with  him  when  he  goes  wrong."  In  the 
same  speech,  referring  to  a  professed  indifference  whether 
slavery  should  be  "voted  down  or  up,"  which  he  construed 
to  mean  a  "covert  real  zeal  for  the  spread"  of  that  insti- 
tution, he  said:  "I  hate  it  because  of  the  monstrous  in- 
justice of  slavery  itself.  I  hate  it  because  it  deprives  our 
republican  example  of  its  just  influence  in  the  world;  en- 

112 


ables  the  enemies  of  free  institutions  to  taunt  us  as 
hypocrites ;  causes  the  friends  of  freedom  to  doubt  our  sin- 
cerity, and,  especially,  because  it  forces  so  many  good  men 
among  ourselves  into  an  open  war  on  the  very  fundamental 
principles  of  civil  liberty.  .  .  .  Slavery  is  founded  in 
the  selfishness  of  man's  nature — opposition  to  it,  in  his 
love  of  justice.  .  .  .  Repeal  all  compromises,  repeal 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  repeal  all  past  history — 
you  still  cannot  repeal  human  nature.  It  still  will  be  the 
abundance  of  man's  heart  that  slavery  extension  is  wrong, 
and  out  of  the  abundance  of  his  heart  his  mouth  will  con- 
tinue to  speak."  As  to  the  question,  what  should  be  done 
to  rid  the  country  of  slavery,  he  said:  (''My  first  impulse 
would  be  to  free  all  the  staves  and  send  them  to  Liberia, 
to  their  own  native  land."/  /Recognizing  the  physical  im- 
possibility of  this,  he  concluded :  "It  does  seem  to  me 
that  systems  of  gradual  emancipation  might  be  adopted ; 
but,  for  their  tardiness  in  this,  I  will  not  undertake  to 
judge  our  brethren  of  the  South" — thus  indicating,  at  once, 
his  preference  as  to  modes  of  emancipation  and  his  charity 
for  the  slaveholders  themselves. 

These  extracts  show  how  early  in  the  agitation  growing 
out  of  the  repeal  of  the  Missouri  Compromise,  Lincoln  had 
taken  ground  in  opposition  to  slavery  and  in  favor  of  its 
gradual  abolition — a  position  which  he  consistently  main- 
tained up  to  the  day  of  his  election  to  the  Presidency. 
These  views  were  reiterated  in  his  speech  of  July  10,  1858, 
from  the  balcony  of  the  Tremont  House  in  Chicago,  in  the 
declaration,  "I  have  always  hated  slavery  as  much  as  any 
Abolitionist,"  and,  in  various  forms,  during  the  debates 
with  Douglas  of  the  same  year.  In  the  following  year  we 
find  him  in  his  speech  at  Cincinnati  (on  September  17, 
1859),  addressing  himself  to  the  citizens,  of  Ms  native  State 
of  Kentucky,  courageously  saying,  '(I  think  slavery  is 
wrong,  morally  and  politically.  >  I  desire  that  it  should  be 
no  further  spread  in  these  United  States,  and  I  should  not 


object  if  it  should  gradually  terminate  in  the  whole  Un- 
ion.^  A  few  months  later,  in  his  speech  in  Cooper  Insti- 
tute, he  put  the  question  of  the  constitutional  rights  of 
slavery  in  the  following  logical  form :  flf  slavery  is 
right,  all  words,  acts,  laws  and  constitutions  against  it  are 
themselves  wrong  and  should  be  swept  away.  If  it  is 
right,  we  cannot  justly  object  to  its  nationality — its  univer- 
sality ;  if  it  is  wrong,  they  cannot  justly  insist  upon  its 
extension — its  enlargement^'  And  he  closed  his  argument 
with  the  following  characteristic  plea:  "Let  us  have  faith 
that  right  makes  might;  and  in  that  faith  let  us,  to  the  end, 
dare  to  do  our  duty  as  we  understand  it."  The  same 
views  were  repeated  at  Hartford,  New  Haven,  and  else- 
where, and  went  far  to  convince  the  pronounced  anti- 
slavery  men  of  New  England  that  the  position  of  the  author 
of  these  sentiments  on  the  slavery  question  was  not  only 
thoroughly  consistent,  but  they  made  him  the  logical  can- 
didate for  the  Presidency  of  those  who  wished  to  check  the 
spread  of  that  institution  into  the  new  States  and  Terri- 
tories, 

While  the  significance  of  these  utterances,  on  the  part 
of  a  man  so  soon  to  be  charged  with  the  duty  of  adminis- 
tering the  affairs  of  the  Government,  will  be  recognized, 
it  will  be  generally  conceded  that  the  most  conspicuous 
event  in  Lincoln's  career  while  he  was  yet  a  private  citi- 
zen— conspicuous  in  relation  to  the  time  of  its  performance 
and  in  its  effect,  by  drawing  the  attention  of  the  whole 
country  to  him  as  a  prominent  figure  in  national  politics — 
was  his  celebrated  "house-divided-against-itself"  speech, 
delivered  after  the  Republican  State  Convention  of  Illinois 
in  the  city  of  Springfield  on  the  evening  of  June  16,  1858. 
After  nominating  candidates  for  State  Treasurer  and  State 
Superintendent  of  Public  Instruction,  the  convention  de- 
clared Lincoln  its  choice  for  United  States  Senator  in  oppo- 
sition to  Douglas,  who,  it  was  known,  would  be  the  choice 
of  the  Democracy.  In  the  evening  the  convention  reassem- 


bled  for  its  final  session,  the  chief  business  being  to  listen 
to  a  promised  speech  from  Lincoln.  The  place  was  the  Hall 
of  Representatives  in  the  old  State  Capitol — a  hall  with 
historical  associations  for  Illinoisans  not  unlike  those  be- 
longing to  the  famous  "Hall  of  William  Rufus,"  so  bril- 
liantly described  by  the  gifted  Macaulay  in  his  essay  on 
the  "Trial  of  Warren  Hastings."  The  speech  was  deliv- 
ered almost  upon  the  identical  spot  on  which,  less  than 
seven  years  later — after  the  results,  which  he  then  fore- 
shadowed in  language  little  short  of  prophecy,  had  been 
achieved  through  his  agency — he  lay,  pale  and  motionless, 
in  the  presence  of  weeping  thousands  of  his  fellow-citizens, 
a  mute  but  eloquent  witness  against  the  savage  blood- 
thirstiness  of  "his  taking  off"  and  the  brutal  and  fiendish 
'tyranny  of  that  system  which  he  had  given  his  life  to  de- 
stroy. The  language  of  his  wonderful  exordium  has  been 
made  familiar  by  frequent  repetition,  but  is  especially  de- 
serving of  reproduction  here.  Speaking  of  the  existing  agi- 
tation on  the  subject  of  the  further  extension  of  slavery, 
he  then  said: 

"In  my  opinion  it  will  not  cease  until  a  crisis  shall  have 
been  reached  and  passed.  'A  house  divided  against  itself  cannot 
stand.'  I  believe  this  government  cannot  endure  permanently 
half -slave  and  half -free.  I  do  not  expect  the  Union  to  be  dis- 
solved— I  do  not  expect  the  house  to  fall — but  I  do  expect  that 
it  will  cease  to  be  divided.  It  will  become  all  one  thing  or  all 
the  other.  Either  the  opponents  of  slavery  will  arrest  the  fur- 
ther spread  of  it  and  place  it  where  the  public  mind  shall 
rest  in  the  belief  that  it  is  in  course  of  ultimate  extinction;  or 
its  advocates  will  push  it  forward  till  it  shall  become  alike  lawful 
in  all  the  States — old  as  well  as  new — North  as  well  as  South." 

How  apparent  these  truths  now  appear,  but  how  few 
then  saw  them  as  Lincoln  did !  And  how  prophetic,  in  the 
light  of  the  history  of  the  next  seven  years,  sound  the  con- 
cluding words  of  faith  and  encouragement: 

"The  result  is  not  doubtful— if  we  stand  firm  we  shall  not 
fail.  Wise  counsels  may  accelerate,  or  mistakes  delay;  but, 
sooner  or  later,  the  victory  is  sure  to  come." 

It  was  my  privilege  as  a  member  of  that  Convention 


on  the  evening  of  the  delivery  of  this  speech,  to  listen  to 
that  wonderful  combination  of  inexorable  logic  and  start- 
ling prophecy,  and  I  have  a  vivid  recollection  of  the  im- 
pressive deliberation  and  earnestness  with  which  he  uttered 
truths  of  the  full  significance  of  which  he  even  then  seemed 
to  have  a  just  appreciation.  It  preceded  Seward's  famous 
speech  in  which  he  announced  the  doctrine  of  an  "irrepres- 
sible conflict,"  and  foreshadowed  more  clearly  than  that 
the  final  result.  It  was  an  alarm  bell  rung  in  the  night, 
announcing  the  beginning  of  that  struggle  between  the 
friends  of  freedom  and  slavery,  which,  less  than  three  years 
afterwards,  culminated  in  the  shock  of  war  that  shook 
this  land  as  it  had  never  been  shaken  before. 

That  Lincoln  regarded  this  speech  as  marking  an  era 
in  his  political  life,  if  not  in  the  life  of  the  nation,  is  shown 
by  his  refusal  to  comply  with  the  advice  of  friends  to 
modify  some  of  its  most  startling  declarations,  and  by  his 
later  statement  to  a  deputation  of  the  Society  of  Friends, 
who  called  upon  him  in  June,  1862,  to  urge  the  adoption 
of  an  emancipation  policy,  when,  in  answer  to  their  refer- 
ence to  the  extract  quoted  above  as  an  implied  pledge  to 
that  effect,  he  said:  "The  sentiments  contained  in  that 
passage  were  deliberately  uttered,  and  I  hold  them  now." 

The  testimony  of  his  intimate  friends  proves  that  the 
whole  speech  had  not  only  been  carefully  written  out  in 
advance,  but  it  was  delivered  with  an  impressive  solemnity, 
a  measured  diction  and  an  emphasis  unusual  even  for  Lin- 
coln. When  it  appeared  in  print,  as  it  did  without  delay, 
it  startled  those  who  heard  it.  It  drew  a  line  between  the 
friends  of  freedom  and  slavery  almost  as  sharp  and  dis- 
tinct as  the  war  did  three  years  later,  and  many  who  had 
been  his  life-long  friends  found  themselves  ranged  on  the 
side  of  his  political  enemies.  That  Lincoln  felt  this  con- 
dition most  deeply  cannot  be  doubted,  in  view  of  the  genial 
character  of  his  friendships,  and  was  well  known  to  his 
more  intimate  associates,  although  it  did  not  cause  him  to 

116 


abate  one  jot  of  his  position.  Some  of  his  stanchest  politi- 
cal friends  were  dumb,  not  because  they  dissented  from 
his  inevitable  conclusions,  but  because  they  doubted  whether 
the  time  had  come  for  their  announcement.  His  more  ag- 
gressive enemies  felt  that  a  favorable  opportunity  was  now 
afforded  to  assail  a  dangerous  political  leader,  and  they  did 
not  hesitate  to  denounce  the  speech  and  its  author  as  teach- 
ing the  most  arrant  abolitionism  and  disunionism.  Both 
were  mistaken,  as  a  careful  reading  of  that  prophetic  pro- 
duction in  the  light  of  subsequent  history  demonstrates. 
Lincoln  had  only  read  the  signs  of  the  times  and  forecast 
the  future  more  accurately  than  his  fellows,  as  he  often  did 
during  the  war  period  which  followed. 

These  views  may  be  taken  as  indicating  very  accurately 
Mr.  Lincoln's  position  on  this  question  at  the  time  of  his 
nomination  for  the  Presidency  on  a  platform,  the  leading 
features  of  which  were  a  declaration  in  favor  of  the  per- 
petuation of  the  Union  and  opposition  to  the  further  ex- 
tension of  slavery.  Regarding  this  as  sufficiently  explicit, 
he  declined  repeated  and  urgent  invitations  to  furnish  for 
publication,  during  the  pending  campaign,  any  further 
statement  of  his  policy.  To  a  friend  who  urged  him  to 
make  such  a  statement,  a  few  weeks  previous  to  the  elec- 
tion, he  wrote: 

"I  appreciate  your  motive  when  you  suggest  the  propriety  of 
my  writing  for  the  public  something  disclaiming  all  intention  to 
interfere  with  slaves  or  slavery  in  the  States ;  but,  in  my  judg- 
ment, it  would  do  no  good.  I  have  already  done  this  many, 
many  times ;  and  it  is  in  print  and  open  to  all  who  will  read. 
Those  who  will  not  read  or  heed  what  I  have  already  publicly 
said,  would  not  read  or  heed  a  repetition  of  it.  'If  they  hear  not 
Moses  and  his  prophets,  neither  will  they  be  persuaded  though 
one  rose  from  the  dead.' " 

After  the  election,  and  pending  his  assumption  of  the 
duties  of  his  office,  he  replied  to  the  editor  of  a  paper  in  a 
slave  State,  who  had  written  urging  him  to  "make  some 
public  declaration"  of  his  views: 

"I  could  say  nothing  which  I  have  not  already  said,  and 
which  is  in  print  and  accessible  to  the  public.  Please  pardon 


me  for  suggesting  that,  if  papers  like  yours,  which  heretofore 
have  persistently  garbled  and  misrepresented  what  I  have  said, 
will  now  fully  and  fairly  place  it  before  their  readers,  there 
can  be  no  further  misunderstanding." 

Nevertheless,  he  was  a  careful  observer  of  political 
events,  as  shown  by  his  letters  to  Congressmen  Kellogg  and 
Washburne  of  Illinois.  To  the  former,  after  the  conven- 
ing of  Congress  in  December,  1860,  he  wrote: 

"Entertain  no  proposition  for  a  compromise  in  regard  to  the 
extension  of  slavery.  .  .  .  The  tug  has  to  come,  and  better 
now  than  later". 

To  Washburne  he  said: 

"Prevent,  as  far  as  possible,  any  of  our  friends  from  de- 
moralizing themselves  find  our  cause  by  entertaining  proposi- 
tions for  compromise  of  any  sort  on  'slavery  extension.'  There 
is  no  possible  compromise  upon  it  but  which  puts  us  under 
again,  and  leaves  all  our  work  to  do  over  again.  .  .  .  On 
that  point  hold  firm  as  with  a  chain  of  steel." 

There  is  nothing  in  his  correspondence,  during  this 
period,  more  pregnant  with  meaning  than  his  letter  to  the 
Hon.  John  A.  Gilmer  of  North  Carolina,  well  known  as  a 
conservative  Southern  man  and  Unionist,  who  had  been 
mentioned  as  a  possible  member  of  Lincoln's  first  cabinet. 
To  Gilmer,  who  had  evidently  written  him  in  the  spirit  of 
some  of  the  correspondents  already  referred  to,  Lincoln  re- 
plied at  considerable  length.  The  following  extracts  are 
the  most  significant: 

"I  am  greatly  disinclined  to  write  a  letter  on  the  subject 
embraced  in  yours ;  and  I  would  not  do  so.  even  privately  as 
I  do,  were  it  not  that  I  fear  that  you  might  misconstrue  my 
silence.  Is  it  desired  I  shall  shift  the  ground  upon  which  I 
have  been  elected?  I  cannot  do  it.  You  need  only  to  acquaint 
yourself  with  that  ground  and  press  it  on  the  attention  of 
the  South.  It  is  all  in  print  and  easy  of  access.  May  I  be 
pardoned  if  I  ask  whether  even  you  have  ever  attempted  to 
procure  the  reading  of  the  Republican  platform,  or  my  speeches, 
by  the  Southern  people?  If  not,  what  reason  have  I  to  expect 
that  any  additional  production  of  mine  would  meet  a  better 
fate?  It  would  make  me  appear  as  if  I  repented  the  crime  of 
having  been  elected,  and  was  anxious  to  apologize  and  beg  for- 
giveness. ...  On  the  Territorial  question  I  am  inflexible. 
...  On  that  there  is  a  difference  between  you  and  us;  and 
it  is  the  only  substantial  difference.  You  think  slavery  is  right 
and  ought  to  be  extended ;  we  think  it  is  wrong  and  ought  to 
be  restricted." 

118 


There  could  be  no  clearer  statement  of  the  relative  po- 
sitions of  Lincoln  and  his  opponents,  on  the  day  of  his  in- 
auguration, than  this  quotation.  In  his  inaugural  he  denned 
the  issue  between  the  respective  sections  of  the  Union  in 
almost  identically  the  same  terms;  and,  as  a  further  nega- 
tive definition  of  his  policy,  he  said:  "I  have  no  purpose, 
directly  or  indirectly,  to  interfere  with  the  institution  of 
slavery  in  the  States  where  it  exists.  I  believe  I  have  no 
lawful  right  to  do  so" — which  was  a  literal  quotation  from 
his  first  debate  with  Douglas  at  Ottawa  in  1858.  His  at- 
titude then  was  precisely  what  it  had  been  from  the  organ- 
ization of  the  Republican  party ;  and  that  was  entirely  con- 
sistent with  the  views  he  had  repeatedly  expressed  from  the 
day  he  protested  against  the  pro-slavery  resolution  adopted 
by  the  Illinois  Legislature  in  1837. 

The  beginning  of  the  war,  following  closely  upon  the 
inauguration,  forced  upon  Lincoln,  as  it  forced  upon  the 
country,  the  recognition  of  a  condition  of  affairs  totally  un- 
precedented in  the  nation's  history.  As  he  had  previously 
endured  every  species  of  misrepresentation,  calumny  and 
detraction  from  his  enemies  without  complaint,  so  now  he 
was  subjected  to  criticism  and  censure  from  those  who  had 
been  his  friends,  but  were  impatient  to  have  their  favorite 
policy  of  emancipation  adopted.  Yet  it  was  as  true  then 
that  he  had  "an  oath  registered  in  heaven  ...  to 
preserve,  protect  and  defend  the  Constitution,"  as  it  was  on 
the  day  he  was  inaugurated ;  and,  as  he  rightly  construed 
the  Constitution,  that  protected  the  rights  of  the  States  un- 
til they  were  forfeited  by  acts  of  their  citizens  or  compelled 
to  give  way  before  the  higher  obligation  to  preserve  the 
Government  and  maintain  the  Union.  Of  the  time  when 
this  step  should  become  necessary — if  at  all — he  was  the 
judge;  and,  while  it  was  no  doubt  painful  for  him  to  differ 
with  the  friends  of  freedom  by  overruling  the  emancipa- 
tion proclamation  of  Fremont  and  the  order  of  Gen.  Hun- 
ter, he  assumed  the  responsibility  with  the  same  courage 


with  which  he  had,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  war,  dared  to  re- 
sist the  scheme  of  secession.  That  he  desired  that  "all  men 
should  be  free"  had  been  proved  by  his  oft-repeated  asser- 
tion to  that  effect;  but  he  also  believed  "gradual,  and  not 
sudden,  emancipation  better  for  all" — for  master  as  well  as 
for  slave — for  Government  as  well  as  for  people — and  he 
advocated  the  policy  of  allowing  compensation  for  the  value 
of  liberated  slaves  as  a  matter  of  economy  no  less  than  of 
right  to  loyal  slave  owners.  When,  early  in  the  second 
year  of  the  war,  the  acts  abolishing  slavery  in  the  District 
of  Columbia  and  prohibiting  it  in  all  the  Territories  had 
been  passed  in  succession  and  met  his  prompt  approval,  he 
made  his  last  earnest  appeal  to  the  Congressmen  from  the 
border  slave  States  in  behalf  of  his  favorite  policy  of  com- 
pensated emancipation,  but  without  effect.V  Had  the  South 
been  wise  enough  to  accept  that  policy,  it  would  have  saved 
hundreds  of  millions  of  treasure  and  hundreds  of  thousands 
of  lives;  besides  this,  the  reconciliation  of  the  warring  sec- 
tions and  their  recovery  from  the  ravages  of  hostilities 
would  have  been  most  speedy.  The  Southern  people  were 
too  much  blinded  by  prejudice  and  passion  to  give  the  sub- 
ject a  moment's  consideration,  and  thus  they  invited  their 
own  undoing. 

^  It  was  at  this  time  that  Lincoln  began  to  turn  his  at- 
tention seriously  to  the  policy  of  emancipation  in  those  por- 
tions of  the  rebel  States  which  persisted  in  their  resistance 
to  Federal  authority.  On  the  I3th  of  July,  1862,  he  opened 
up  the  subject  to  Secretary  Welles  and  Secretary  Seward, 
and  on  the  22nd — three  days  after  his  last  futile  conference 
with  the  Congressmen  from  the  border  States — he  brought 
the  matter  before  the  whole  cabinet.  Accepting  the  advice 
of  Secretary  Seward,  who  argued  that  the  step  at  that  time 
would  be  premature,  he  consented  to  postpone  action  until 
some  success  had  been  won  in  the  field.  The  battle  of  An- 
tietam  furnished  the  occasion  for  which  he  had  been  wait- 
ing. ^Lincoln  completed  the  second  draft  of  his  preliminary 


proclamation,  of  which  he  had  prepared  the  first  in  July, 
submitted  it  to  the  cabinet  on  Saturday,  September  20 — three 
days  after  the  battle — revised  it  on  Sunday  morning,  added 
two  verbal  changes  suggested  by  Secretary  Seward ;  it  re- 
ceived the  official  signature  on  Monday  following,  and  was 
given  to  the  world.  The  step  was  taken  without  consulta- 
tion with  the  cabinet,  but  avowedly  and  explicitly  on  the 
responsibility  of  the  President  himself,  and,  as  he  declared 
in  the  final  proclamation  in  January  following,  "as  an  act 
of  justice  warranted  by  the  Constitution  upon  military  ne- 
cessity." The  diaries  of  members  of  the  cabinet  show  that, 
at  most,  only  two  of  the  members  of  that  body  distinctly 
approved  the  measure  as  to  time  and  manner,  and  one 
(Postmaster-General  Blair),  who  objected  on  the  grounds 
of  political  expediency,  asked  and  obtained  permission  to 
file  a  protest  with  the  document.  One  of  Lincoln's  most 
sturdy  and  sagacious  friends,  Secretary  Gideon  Welles,  who 
was  acquainted  with  every  step  taken  by  the  administration, 
and  whose  Spartan  firmness  saved  the  Government  from 
many  a  blunder,  says  of  the  proclamation: 

"It  was  his  (Lincoln's)  own  act,  a  bold  step,  an  executive 
measure  originating  with  him,  and  was,  as  stated  in  the  mem- 
orable appeal  at  the  close  of  the  final  proclamation,  invoking 
for  it  the  considerate  judgment  of  mankind,  warranted  alone 
by  military  necessity.  .  .  .  Results  have  proved  that  there 
was  in  the  measure  profound  thought,  statesmanship,  courage 
and  far-seeing  sagacity — consummate  executive  and  administra- 
tive ability,  which  was,  after  some  reverses,  crowned  with  suc- 
cess. The  nation  emerging  from  gloom  and  disaster,  and  the 
whole  civilized  world,  united  in  awarding  honor  and  gratitude 
to  the  illustrious  man  who  had  the  mind  to  conceive  and  the 
courage  and  firmness  to  decree  the  emancipation  of  a  race." 

And  yet  there  are  those  who  profess  to  believe  that,  in 
taking  this  step,  Lincoln  acted  with  unjustifiable  hesitation 
and  reluctance.  That  the  duty  imposed  upon  him  was  un- 
expected and  undesired  is  no  doubt  true,  as  the  war  which 
made  it  a  necessity  was  undesired.  How  little  of  agree- 
ment there  was  among  pronounced  Union  men  in  Congress, 
during  the  first  year  of  the  war,  in  reference  to  the  manner 
of  dealing  with  slaves  and  the  question  of  slavery  in  the 

121 


rebellious  States,  is  shown  by  the  fact  that  a  bill  freeing  the 
slaves  of  rebel  masters  failed  in  the  House  of  Representa- 
tives in  the  last  days  of  May,  1862,  though  a  measure  going 
even  farther  than  this  became  a  law,  with  the  President's 
approval,  on  the  i/th  of  July  following.  Thus  it  appears 
that  Congress,  no  less  than  the  administration,  was  "at  sea" 
on  this  question,  though  progressing  towards  the  final 
haven.  What  wonder,  then,  that  the  President,  who  was 
compelled  to  bear  upon  his  shoulders  the  entire  responsibil- 
ity of  his  policy,  should  hesitate  to  take  the  most  momen- 
tous step  of  his  administration,  when  it  was  doubtful,  not 
merely  whether  that  step  would  be  approved  by  the  people 
— which  was  essential  to  the  success  of  the  Union  cause — 
but  whether  it  would  be  sustained  by  a  Union  Congress? 
The  responsibility  resting  upon  him,  as  Commander-in- 
Chief  of  the  army  and  navy  in  such  an  emergency,  was  in- 
finitely greater,  and  the  task  confronting  him  more  difficult 
and  delicate  than  that  which  any  legislator  was  called  upon 
to  face.  Even  the  Cabinet  was  not  free  from  dissension,  as 
proven  by  the  secret  history  of  that  body  coming  to  light  in 
later  years. 

It  is  true  that,  in  a  conference  held  with  advocates  of 
immediate  emancipation  during  the  summer  of  1862 — no- 
tably with  the  Chicago  clergymen  on  the  I3th  of  September 
—{Lincoln  suggested  arguments  which  implied  opposition  to 
the  measure,  as  he  also  did  in  his  famous  letter  to  Horace 
Greeley,  of  August  22nd  of  that  year,  when  he  declared: 

"My  paramount  object  in  this  struggle  is  to  save  the  Union, 
and  is  not  either  to  save  or  destroy  slavery.  If  I  could  save 
the  Union  without  freeing  any  slave,  I  would  do  it ;  and  if  I 
could  save  it  by  freeing  some  and  leaving  others  alone,  I  would 
also  do  that.j  What  I  do  about  slavery  and  the  colored  race 
I  do  because  I  believe  it  helps  to  save  the  Union;  and  what 
I  forbear,  I  forbear  because  I  do  not  believe  it  would  help  to 
save  the  Union." 

In  conclusion  he  impressively  added: 

"I  intend  no  modification  of  my  oft-expressed  personal  wish 
that  all  men  everywhere  could  be  free." 

This  undoubtedly  expressed  his  whole  creed,  so  far  as 


emancipation  and  preservation  of  the  Union  were  con- 
cerned ;  and,  in  expressing  it,  he  was  preparing  the  way  for 
the  one,  while  seeking  to  secure  the  other.  f\Yet  how  few 
comprehend  the  full  significance  of  these  sententious  propo- 
sitions !  To  the  Chicago  committee,  referring  to  the  objec- 
tions he  had  suggested  to  their  policy,  he  said :  "They  in- 
dicate the  difficulties  that  have  thus  far  prevented  my  action 
in  some  such  way  as  you  desire.  I  have  not  decided  against 
a  proclamation  of  liberty  to  the  slaves,  but  hold  the  matter 
under  advisement;  and  I  assure  you  that  the  subject  is  on 
my  mind,  by  day  and  night,  more  than  any  other.  What- 
eve*r  shall  appear  to  be  God's  will,  I  will  do."  Not  less 
significant  was  his  remark  to  some  western  gentlemen,  as 
testified  by  Moncure  D.  Conway,  in  the  Fortnightly  Review 
of  1865:  "We  shall  want  all  the  anti-slavery  feeling  in 
the  country  and  more ;  go  home  and  screw  the  people  up  to 
it,  and  you  may  say  anything  you  like  about  me,  if  that  will 
help."  This  indicates  that  he  was  willing  to  be  criticised, 
if  that  would  aid  in  bringing  about  the  grand  result.  And, 
at  the  very  moment  when  uttering  these  sentiments,  as  also 
when  writing  his  reply  to  Mr.  Greeley,  the  first  draft  of 
the  preliminary  emancipation  proclamation  was  lying  in  his 
desk,  and  within  ten  days  after  his  interview  with  the  Chi- 
cago committee — the  time  for  the  fulfillment  of  his  vow 
having  arrived  in  the  success  of  the  Union  arms  at  Antie- 
tam — the  proclamation  became  an  accomplished  fact.  The 
spirit  of  the  act  was  shown  in  his  response  to  a  serenade  on 
the  second  day  after  the  document  was  made  public :  "What 
I  did,  I  did  after  a  very  full  deliberation  and  under  a  very 
heavy  and  solemn  responsibility.  I  can  only  trust  in  God 
I  have  made  no  mistake.  .  .  .  It  is  now  for  the  coun- 
try and  the  world  to  pass  judgment,  and,  may  be,  take 
action  upon  it."  When,  less  than  three  months  before  his 
assassination,  Congress  adopted  the  Thirteenth  Amendment 
to  the  Constitution  prohibiting  slavery  throughout  the 
United  States,  he  found  his  act  ratified  and  extended  by  the 

183 


highest  legislative  power  in  the  land — "winding  the  whole 
thing  up,"  as  he  expressed  it — as  it  had  already  been  ap- 
proved by  the  people  and  sustained  by  the  army  in  the 
field. 

That  Lincoln's  policy  as  to  emancipation  underwent 
modifications  and  changes  is  unquestionable ;  but  they  were 
founded  in  wisdom,  while  the  principles  actuating  him  were 
steadfast  and  unalterable.  The  one  was  progressive,  vary- 
ing with  the  changing  conditions  and  demands  of  the  time ; 
the  other  fixed  on  the  inexorable  logic  of  facts  and  events. 
He  had  the  courage  to  follow  wherever  his  invincible  logic 
led,  yet  he  did  not  always  act  until  his  unerring  sagacity 
enabled  him  to  perceive  that  some  useful  result  was  to  be 
attained  thereby — a  fact  illustrated  in  his  delay  of  the 
emancipation  proclamation  until  he  believed  the  people  were 
ready  to  accept  and  sustain  it.  While  seeming  to  follow 
public  sentiment,  he  skillfully  contrived  to  guide  and  direct 
it.  This  was  the  secret  of  his  hold  upon  the  popular  heart : 
keeping  "close  to  the  people,"  he  made  himself  a  part  of 
them,  and  no  public  man  in  American  history  has  been  held, 
at  once,  in  such  exalted  veneration  and  in  such  intimate  and 
sympathetic  fellowship. 

Having  once  taken  his  position  there  was  no  backward 
step  in  his  policy.  This  was  shown  in  his  course  with  ref- 
erence alike  to  the  emancipation  question  and  the  rights 
of  negroes  employed  in  the  army.  From  his  -order  pre- 
scribing retaliation  for  every  colored  soldier  executed  by 
the  rebels  in  violation  of  the  laws  of  war,  or  sold  into 
slavery,  to  the  instructions  to  Secretary  Seward  controlling 
his  action  at  the  Hampton  Roads  conference,  in  January, 
1865 — that  there  will  be  "no  receding  by  the  Executive  of 
the  United  States  on  the  slavery  question  from  the  position 
assumed  thereon  in  the  late  annual  message  to  Congress 
and  in  preceding  documents" — the  policy  of  Lincoln  on  this 
subject  was  uniform,  as  the  following  utterances  will  show : 
"If  they  (the  colored  soldiers)  stake  their  lives  for  us,  they 


must  be  prompted  by  the  strongest  motive — even  the  promise 
•of  freedom.  And  the  promise  being  made,  must  be  kept." — 
Letter  read  before  the  Union  Mass  Meeting  at  Springfield,  Illi- 
nois, September  3,  1863. 

"While  I  remain  in  my  present  position  I  shall  not  attempt 
to  retract  or  modify  the  Emancipation  Proclamation;  nor  shall 
I  return  to  slavery  any  person  who  is  free  toy  the  terms  of  that 
proclamation,  or  by  any  of  the  acts  of  Congress." — Annual  Mes- 
sage, December  8,  1863. 

"Having  determined  to  use  the  negro  as  a  soldier,  there 
is  no  way  but  to  give  him  all  the  protection  given  to  any  sol- 
dier."— Address  at  Baltimore  Sanitary  Fair,  April  18,  1864. 

"In  presenting  the  abandonment  of  armed  resistance  to  the 
National  authority  on  the  part  of  the  insurgents  as  the  only 
indispensable  condition  of  peace,  I  retract  nothing  heretofore 
said  as  to  slavery.  I  repeat  the  declaration  made  a  year  ago, 
that,  while  I  shall  not  attempt  to  retract  or  modify  the  Eman- 
cipation Proclamation ;  nor  shall  I  return  to  slavery  any  per- 
son who  is  free  by  the  terms  of  that  proclamation,  or  by  any 
of  the  acts  of  Congress.  ...  If  the  people  should,  by  what- 
ever, mode  or  means,  make  it  an  executive  duty  to  re-enslave 
such  persons,  another  and  -not  I,  must  be  their  instrument  to 
perform  it." — Annual  Message,  December  6,  1864. 

The  celebrated  letter,  "To  Whom  It  May  Concern," 
under  which  Horace  Greeley  was  authorized  to  confer  with 
the  so-called  "Commissioners"  of  the  Confederate  Govern- 
ment at  Niagara  Falls,  in  July,  1864,  was  couched  in  simi- 
lar terms,  pledging  the  Government  to  the  consideration  of 
""any  proposition  which  embraces  the  restoration  of  peace, 
the  integrity  of  the  whole  Union  and  the  abandonment  of 
slavery."  And,  in  an  interview  held  in  August,  1864,  he 
said  in  regard  to  a  proposition  that  had  been  made  to  him : 

"There  are  men  base  enough  to  propose  to  me  to  return 
to  slavery  our  black  warriors  of  Port  Hudson  and  Olustee,  and 
thus  win  the  respect  of  the  masters  they  fought.  Should  I  do 
so,  I  should  deserve  to  be  damned  in  time  and  in  eternity.  Come 
what  may,  I  will  keep  faith  with  the  black  man.  ...  No 
human  power  can  subdue  this  rebellion  without  the  emancipa- 
tion policy.  I  will  abide  the  issue." 

These  quotations  show  with  what  unswerving  fidelity 
and  invincible  firmness  Abraham  Lincoln,  having  once  taken 
"his  stand  on  the  platform  of  emancipation,  ever  after  stood 
by  his  pledge.  Such  examples  illustrate  and  confirm  what 
lias  been  said  in  relation  to  the  development  of  his  anti- 
its 


slavery  policy.    With  characteristic  modesty,  he  said  to  Mr. 
Hodges  of  Kentucky: 

"I  claim  not  to  have  controlled  events,  but  confess  plainly 
that  events  have  controlled  me.  Now  at  the  end  of  three  years' 
struggle,  the  nation's  condition  is  not  what  either  party  or  any 
man  devised  or  expected.  God  alone  can  claim  it  Whither 
it  is  tending  seems  plain.  If  God  now  wills  the  removal  of 
a  great  wrong,  and  wills  that  we  of  the  North,  as  well  as  you 
of  the  South,  shall  pay  fairly  for  our  complicity  in  that  wrong, 
impartial  history  will  find  therein  new  cause  to  attest  and 
revere  the  justice  and  goodness  of  God." 

Yet  what  leader,  with  such  instrumentalities  and  in  the 
face  of  such  perplexities,  ever  before  brought  forth  such 
beneficent  results?  From  the  pathetic  and  marvelously 
touching  appeal  for  peace  and  Union  in  his  first  inaugural 
— an  appeal  that  has  never  been  surpassed,  if  equaled,  in 
impressiveness  and  power  in  any  state  paper,  and  which 
could  only  fail  of  its  object  because  the  minds  of  those  to 
whom  it  was  addressed  had  been  blinded  by  prejudice  and 
hate — down  to  the  reverent  acknowledgment  to  Almighty 
God,  in  his  second  and  last,  for  the  success  of  the  Union 
arms  and  the  recognition  of  His  power  in  so  controlling 
the  struggle  as  to  end  in  the  destruction  of  slavery,  all  his 
official  and  private  utterances  breathe  the  same  spirit  of 
faith  in  the  final  triumph,  with  a  more  emphatic  determina- 
tion to  protect  the  freed  slaves  in  their  newly  acquired 
rights.  In  all  there  is  no  evidence  that  he  ever  swerved 
from  the  confidence  expressed  in  his  Springfield  speech: 

"We  shall  not  fail — if  we  stand  firm,  we  shall  not  fail.  Wise 
counsels  may  accelerate  or  mistakes  delay,  but  sooner  or  later, 
the  victory  is  sure  to  come." 

That  faith — first  uttered  in  anticipation  of  a  protracted 
political  struggle,  firmly  maintained  in  succeeding  stages  of 
tbe  conflict  of  arms,  and  confirmed  in  the  final  triumph  of 
emancipation  as  an  incident  of  the  war,  and  not  its  primary 
object — grew  with  every  step  in  the  progress  of  the  contest. 
And  when,  in  the  closing  words  of  his  last  inaugural,  he  de- 
clared: "Fondly  do  we  hope,  fervently  do  we  pray,  that 
this  mighty  scourge  of  war  may  speedily  pass  away.  Yet, 


if  God  wills  that  it  continue  until  all  the  wealth  piled  by 
the  bondman's  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  of  unrequited 
toil  shall  be  sunk,  and  until  every  drop  of  blood  drawn  by 
the  lash  shall  be  paid  by  another  drawn  by  the  sword,  as 
was  said  three  thousand  years  ago,  so  still  must  it  be  said, 
'The  judgments  of  the  Lord  are  true  and  righteous  alto- 
gether.' "  From  that  hour  the  world  no  longer  had  reason 
for  doubting  that  Abraham  Lincoln  was  inspired  by  a 
sublime  patriotic  and  religious  purpose,  and  that  he  had 
never  lost  sight  of  the  result  which  he  predicted  in  his 
great  speech  in  the  old  State  House  at  Springfield,  delivered 
on  that  June  evening  in  1858.  During  all  of  this  most 
tragic  period  of  the  Nation's  history,  although  compelled  to 
deal  with  problems  and  face  emergencies  such  as  never 
confronted  any  other  occupant  of  the  Presidential  chair,  he 
invariably  rose  to  the  demands  of  the  occasion,  whether  in- 
volving questions  of  national  or  of  foreign  policy  A.  While 
Garrison,  Phillips  and  other  anti-slavery  leaders  of  half  a 
century  ago,  aided  unintentionally  by  their  pro-slavery  an- 
tagonists, were  the  pioneers  in  the  agitation  which  aroused 
the  people  to  a  true  conception  of  the  enormities  of  Ameri- 
can slavery,  it  was  Lincoln  that  furnished  and  put  in  oper- 
ation the  conserving  influence  which  finally  welded  radical- 
ism and  conservatism  together,  and  made  the  destruction 
of  slavery  compatible  with  law  and  the  preservation  of  the 
Union.  In  the  language  of  Grant  at  the  dedication  of  the 
Lincoln  monument  at  Springfield  in  1874,  "In  his  death 
the  Nation  lost  its  greatest  hero ;  in  his  death,  the  South  lost 
its  most  just  friend." 

One  who  was  a  personal  friend  and  admirer  of  Lincoln, 
as  well  as  his  political  supporter,  but  who  was  confessedly 
dissatisfied  with  his  early  emancipation  policy,  when  he  saw 
the  array  of  evidence  presented  in  this  study,  going  to 
prove  Lincoln's  consistency  and  fidelity  to  principle,  wrote: 
"How  much  wiser  he  was  then  all  his  people !"  His  highest 
eulogy  is  to  state  what  he  was  and  what  he  did.  In  his 


public  career  personal  and  national  history  are  so  intimately 
blended  and  interwoven,  that  it  is  impossible  wholly  to  sepa- 
rate them.  And  it  is  in  view  of  what  he  said  and  what  he 
did,  and  of  the  death  that  he  died,  that  the  prophecy  con- 
tained in  the  sadly  musical  words  which  form  the  closing 
paragraph  of  his  first  inaugural  address  is  receiving  a  new 
significance  and  its  most  impressive  fulfillment ;  that  "the 
mystic  chords  of  memory,  stretching  away  from  every  bat- 
tlefield and  patriot  grave  to  every  heart  and  hearthstone 
all  over  this  broad  land,"  have  begun  to  "swell  the  chorus 
of  the  Union,"  when  touched,  as  they  surely  have  been,  "by 
the  better  angels  of  our  nature."  But  the  most  potent 
touch  was  applied  by  the  hand  of  Abraham  Lincoln,  and 
the  responsive  strings  will  go  on  vibrating,  with  ever  in- 
creasing melody,  through  the  coming  ages  of  our  national 
existence. 


DEATH  OF  LINCOLN. 
A  Reminiscence  of  the  Tragedy  of  April  14,   1865. 

The  following  article  from  the  pen  of  the  author  of  the 
preceding  address  contains  the  first  editorial  comment  upon 
the  assassination  of  President  Lincoln,  which  appeared  in 
the  columns  of  his  home  paper,  The  Illinois  State  Journal, 
of  Springfield,  111.  During  the  Civil  War  period  the  writer 
was  associated  with  the  editorial  department  of  The  Journal, 
the  only  morning  paper -then  published  in  Springfield  re- 
ceiving the  regular  telegraphic  reports  of  the  Associated 
Press,  and  outside  of  the  mechanical  department  of  the 
paper,  was  the  first  citizen  of  Springfield  to  receive  intelli- 
gence of  the  crime,  the  announcement  of  which,  a  few  hours 
later,  shocked  the  whole  nation.  After  spending  much  of 
the  night  at  the  side  of  the  operator  in  the  telegraph  office, 
awaiting  the  latest  report  of  Mr.  Lincoln's  condition,  the 
writer  retired  from  the  office  about  6  a.  m.,  but  on  returning 
three  hours  later,  met  intelligence  of  the  fatal  outcome  of 
the  assassin's  revolting  crime,  which  was  announced  in  a 
brief  "Extra,"  and  by  noon  many  of  the  business  houses 
and  residences  of  Springfield  were  draped  in  mourning,  and 
a  feeling  of  horror  pervaded  the  entire  population.  The  first 
regular  issue  of  The  Illinois  State  Journal  after  the  calam- 
itous event  occurred  on  Monday,  April  17,  1865,  from  which 
this  article  is  taken. 


THE  GREAT  NATIONAL  CALAMITY. 

ABRAHAM  LINCOLN  is  DEAD!  These  portentous  words, 
as  they  sped  'over  the  wires  throughout  the  length  and 
breadth  of  the  land  on  Saturday  morning  last,  sent  a  thrill 
of  agony  through  millions  of  loyal  hearts  and  shrouded  a 
nation,  so  lately  rejoicing  in  the  hour  of  victory,  in  the 


deepest  sorrow.  The  blow  came  at  a  moment  so  unexpected 
and  was  so  sudden  and  staggering,  the  crime  by  which  he 
fell  was  so  atrocious  and  the  manner  of  it  so  revolting, 
that  men  were  unable  to  realize  the  fact  that  one  of  the  pur- 
est of  patriots,  the  most  beloved  and  honored  of  Presidents, 
and  the  most  forbearing  and  magnanimous  of  rulers  had 
perished  at  the  hands  of  an  assassin.  The  horrifying  de- 
tails recalled  only  scenes  which  had  disgraced  the  barbaric 
ages.  People  were  unwilling  to  believe  that,  in  our  own 
time,  there  could  be  found  men  capable  of  a  crime  so  utterly 
fiendish  and  brutal.  One  of  the  assassins,  in  a  crowded 
theater,  stealthily  approaches  a  man  against  whom  he  could 
have  no  just  cause  of  enmity ;  a  man  so  tender  in  his  feel- 
ings and  so  sympathetic,  that  all  his  errors  were  on  the 
side  of  mercy ;  a  man  who  had  been  twice  elected  to  the 
highest  office  in  the  gift  of  a  great  people — and  without 
notice  of  his  presence  while  his  victim,  with  his  wife  sitting 
by  his  side,  is  wholly  unconscious  of  danger,  deliberately 
discharges  a  pistol  from  behind,  piercing  the  head  of  the 
President  with  the  fatal  ball,  then  availing  himself  of  the 
bewilderment  of  the  audience,  leaps  from  the  stage  and 
makes  his  escape.  The  other  assassin,  at  nearly  the  same 
moment,  obtrudes  himself  into  the  sick  chamber  of  a  man 
who,  but  a  few  days  before,  had  narrowly  escaped  death  by 
being  thrown  from  his  carriage,  and  whose  life  is  hardly 
yet  free  from  danger,  and  commences  a  murderous  assault 
upon  his  prostrate  and  helpless  victim  and  his  unarmed  at- 
tendants. It  is  impossible  to  conceive  of  anything  more  fiend- 
ish and  diabolical.  And  yet  this  is  "Chivalry!" — and  its 
perpetrators  profess  to  be  influenced  by  the  love  of  Lib- 
erty! It  is  the  chivalry  of  the  desperado  and  the  love  of 
liberty  which  controls  the  highwayman  and  the  enemy  of 
humanity. 

The  nation  is  bereaved.  Every  loyal  man  and  woman 
mourns  the  loss  of  one  whose  unswerving  justice,  whose 
pure  and  unsullied  character  and  whose  mercifulness  to- 
wards his  enemies  had  won  the  respect  of  those  enemies 
themselves.  All  but  traitors  mourn  him  as  a  personal  friend. 
At  such  an  hour  as  this,  and  in  sight  of  the  fearful  crime 
that  has  been  committed,  the  spirit  of  mere  partisanship 
is  disarmed  and  its  voice  is  silenced.  Nothing  but  the  most 
demoniac  treason  dares  to  assail  a  man  so  foully  dealt  with 
or  gloat  over  "The  deep  damnation  of  his  taking  off." 

130 


President  Lincoln  died  at  the  hand  of  Slavery.  It  was 
Slavery  that  conceived  the  fearful  deed;  it  was  Slavery  that 
sought  and  found  the  willing  instrument  and  sped  the  fatal 
ball ;  it  is  Slavery  alone  that  will  justify  the  act.  Hence- 
forth men  will  look  upon  Slavery  as  indeed  "the  sum  of  all 
villainies,"  the  fruitful  parent  of  all  crime.  This  murder 
was  an  assault  upon  the  principle  of  free  government,  inas- 
much as  its  victim  was  the  choice  of  a  majority  of  the  nation 
for  the  office  which  he  filled.  He  has  fallen  in  the  very 
hour  of  victory,  when  constitutional  free  government  was 
being  vindicated  and  when  peace  seemed  just  ready  to  re- 
turn to  a  land  torn  and  distracted  by  civil  war.  Despite  the 
calumnies  of  his  enemies,  his  fame  is  now  secure.  History 
and  posterity  will  now  do  him  justice.  His  memory  will 
be,a  rich  inheritance  to  our  nation,  attracting  to  his  tomb  the 
lovers  of  freedom  from  all  lands  and  dividing,  with  that  of 
Washington,  the  admiration  of  the  world.  With  a  slight 
change  of  phraseology,  the  closing  lines  of  the  magnificent 
tyric  (the  "Battle  Hymn  of  the  Republic")  will  apply  to 
the  death  of  Abraham  Lincoln : 

"As  Christ  died  to  make  men  holy, 
So  HE  died  to  make  men  free, 
While  God  is  marching  on." 


BIOGRAPHICAL  NOTE. 


Paul  Selby,  the  author  of  the  foregoing  address,  was  born  in 
Pickaway  County,  Ohio,  July  20,  1825;  at  the  age  of  nineteen  re- 
moving to  southern  Illinois,  where  he  was  engaged  in  teaching 
four  years,  chiefly  in  Madison  County.  In  1848  he  entered  Illinois 
College,  at  Jacksonville,  leaving  that  institution  in  his  junior  year 
(1852)  to  assume  the  editorship  of  The  Morgan  Journal,  at  Jacksons- 
ville,  with  which  he  remained  until  1858,  covering  the  period  of  the 

131 


organization  of  the  Republican  Party,  in  which  The  Journal  took 
an  active  part.  It  was  at  the  suggestion  of  this  paper  that  a  con- 
vention of  Anti-Nebraska  editors  of  the  State  of  Illinois  was  held  at 
Decatur,  on  the  22nd  of  February,  1856,  for  the  purpose  of  defining 
a  line  of  policy  for  a  new  party.  The  call  for  this  convention  was 
endorsed  by  twenty-five  editors  of  the  State,  but  on  the  day  of  ita 
assembling,  owing  to  a  snowstorm  which  blocked  many  of  the  rail- 
roads, only  twelve  were  in  attendance,  among  those  present  being 
Dr.  Charles  H.  Ray,  of  The  Chicago  Tribune,  the  late  George 
Schneider,  then  of  The  Chicago  Staats  Zeitung,  B.  F.  Shaw,  now 
of  The  Dixon  Telegraph,  and  nine  others.  Mr.  Selby  was  made 
chairman  of  the  meeting  and  W.  J .  Usrey  of  The  Decatur  Chronicle, 
Secretary.  Abraham  Lincoln  was  present,  and  in  conference  with 
the  Committee  on  Resolutions,  of  which  Charles  H.  Ray  was  Chair- 
man, took  part  in  framing  a  platform  in  opposition  to  the  further 
extension  of  slavery,  and  recommending  theholding  of  a  State  Con- 
vention at  Bloomington  on  the  29th  of  May  following,  which  resulted 
in  the  formal  organization  of  the  new  party,  and  at  which  Mr.  Lin- 
coln delivered  what  has  been  called  his  "Lost  Speech."  It  was  at 
this  Decatur  meeting  that  Mr.  Selby  was  brought  in  close  contact 
with  Mr.  Lincoln,  and  in  after  years  was  a  frequent  visitor  at  his 
office  in  Springfield.  On  June  16,  1858,  Mr.  Selby  was  a  member 
of  the  State  Convention  at  Springfield,  which  named  Mr.  Lincoln 
as  its  candidate  for  United  States  Senator,  and  before  which,  on 
the  evening  of  that  day,  he  delivered  his  celebrated  "house  divided 
against  itself"  speech,  which  forecast  so  accurately  events  which 
occurred  during  the  next  seven  years,  and  in  which  he  bore  so  con- 
spicuous a  part.  This  speech  Mr.  Selby  recalls  as  having  been 
delivered  almost  identically  from  the  same  spot  in  the  Hall  of  Rep- 
resentatives on  which  the  catafalque  bearing  the  Martyred  Presi- 
dent's lifeless  remains  rested  in  May,  1865. 

After  two  years  (1859-1861),  spent  in  educational  work  in  Louisi- 
ana, Mr.  Selby  returned  North  in  July,  1861,  and  in  July,  1862,  be- 
came associate  editor  of  The  Illinois  State  Journ al  in  Mr.  Lincoln's 
home  city  of  Springfield,  where  he  remained  until  after  the  close 
of  the  war.  Later  he  was  associated  in  an  editorial  capacity  with 
The  Chicago  Evening  Journal,  The  Chicago  Republican,  and  for  six 
years  as  editor  of  The  Quincy  Whig,  when  in  1874,  he  resumed 
his  old  position  on  The  State  Journal,  four  years  later  becoming 
one  of  its  proprietors  and  editor-in-chief,  a  position  which  he  held 
almost  continuously  for  fifteen  years.  In  1880  he  was  appointed 
Postmaster  of  the  city  of  Springfield,  was  re-appointed  in  1884, 
serving  for  a  period  of  six  years  and  resigning  during  the  adminis- 
tration of  Grover  Cleveland  in  1886.  Disposing  of  his  interest  in 
The  State  Journal  in  1889,  in  the  following  year  he  removed  to  Chi- 

132 


•cago,  where  he  has  since  been  engaged  in  literary  work,  during  1897 
and  1898,  being  connected  with  the  editorial  department  of  The 
Chicago  Tribune.  In  all  he  has  spent  about  forty  years  in  news- 
paper work,  of  which  about  twenty  years  was  in  connection  with 
The  Illinois  State  Journal,  which,  during  Mr.  Lincoln's  life,  was 
regarded  as  his  home  organ. 


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3  1158  01093  5020 


